Integrated circuit memories have come into extensive use in many applications, particularly for computer systems. It has been a pronounced technological trend to increase the capacity and density of such memories. As manufacturing and design techniques have improved, the cost of memory circuits has decreased dramatically, and this has greatly expanded the number of applications and the size of the market. However, the low cost, large capacity integrated circuits now in use have volatile memory storage, that is, the data stored in these memories is lost when the power is removed. There are many applications that could be enhanced if low cost memories could be made which are non-volatile. In certain applications, it is essential that the data be retained in the memory when power is removed. To fill this market, there have been developed a number of types of non-volatile memories. Among the most common of these now in use is the electronically programmable read only memory (EPROM). However, the non-volatile memories now available typically have a rather low density of memory storage, are generally complex to manufacture, often have a limited lifetime and are much more expensive than volatile memories. The need for non-volatile memory storage in integrated circuits has long been recognized, but a low cost solution has not yet been found.
The phenomenon of ferroelectric materials has been recognized and studied for many years. Such materials have multiple orientation states which can be selected by the application of an electric field. The particular orientation state which is set in a ferroelectric material can be used to represent a data state. This orientation state is retained even when no further power is applied to the material. It is thus possible to store a particular state in a non-powered device and then to read the data state at a later time. It has long been recognized that ferroelectric materials could serve as a memory element in an electrical circuit. An early recognition of this application is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,695,396 to Anderson. Since the Anderson patent, there have been more disclosures of circuitry which utilize ferroelectric elements from memory storage. Such patents include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,144,591 to Brody, 4,149,301 to Cook and 4,360,896 to Brody. Still other patents report circuits which use ferroelectric materials in a memory. But, despite the numerous references to reports of ferroelectric memory devices, there has to date been no known device of this type which has been introduced into the commercial market. The demand for non-volatile memories is well recognized and the apparent applicability of ferroelectric materials and the fabrication of such devices have been reported. But, numerous problems have been experienced in both the manufacture and design of practical ferroelectric devices.
The present invention sets forth a circuit design for a ferroelectric memory which takes advantage of the non-volatile characteristics of such memory elements, while providing fast, reliable writing and reading of data for such circuits.